anyCLIMBERS from OKALHOMA--your are in thought and prayers..

"....seems like societal failure of common sense..."

healyje

Trad climber
Portland, Oregon

May 20, 2013 - 04:06pm PT
Odd that refrigeration eliminated one of the better forms of tornado protection from that landscape. I wouldn't live in one of these areas without some form of underground protection, seems like societal failure of common sense to build suburbs in these areas without such shelters .

Could just be me, I guess, but if I decided to live in a known tornado alley, I'd take some basic precautions for my family. So when I see what seems like common sense getting lost on a grand scale, I just can't help but wonder what's going on. Or are you saying you'd live there with no storm shelter of any kind and just roll the dice?

Moore is a middle to middle upper class town with half the poverty rate of Reno. The aerial path shots are of high square footage homes in well-to-do neighborhoods of likely recently built homes. Most of the cars in the wreckage easily cost many times the installed cost of a storm shelter. There's certainly no affordability issue in the vast majority of those high-end homes. What's even more of a mystery is how the institutions failed to mandate a $2-3k storm shelter be built into every new home built since an F5 hit the town in '99.

If you are at work and your kids are at school, what does it matter if you have a shelter at home?

And let's distinguish between those events we can do something about and those we can't.

Three storm chasers were among those killed by violent storms in the Oklahoma City area last week, family members said Sunday.

Tim Samaras, a veteran storm chaser considered a leader in tornado research and data collection, died along with his 24-year-old son, Paul Samaras, and partner, Carl Young, while tracking an EF-3 tornado that struck the Oklahoma City suburb of El Reno Friday evening.

All three were known from the Discovery Channel show “Storm Chasers,” which aired for five years, ending in the fall of 2011.
...
Officials have not yet determined the circumstances of their deaths. The violent and erratic twister also swept up a Weather Channel truck, tossing it 200 yards and injuring members of the team inside.

Mike Bettes, an anchor and meteorologist for the Weather Channel who was in the truck, described the storm in an interview with CNN on Sunday.

"I think this was just an erratic tornado. I think the size of it and the speed of it changed very, very quickly," Bettes said. "I think the direction of movement changed quickly. And I think there were a lot of people out there that, you know, ended up getting stuck in positions we didn't want to be in."

Oklahoma Highway Patrol Trooper Betsy Randolph says she could hear the audio from storm chasers trapped on Oklahoma highways as a tornado bore down.

"They were screaming, 'We're going to die, we're going to die,' " she recalls. "There was just no place to go. There was no place to hide."

... killed by a tornado in El Reno that packed winds of up to 165 mph. They were among 10 killed in storms Friday in Oklahoma.
...
Samaras' crushed vehicle was found along a road running south of and parallel to Highway 40 just outside El Reno, Okla., leading authorities to speculate he was tracking the tornado as it was heading east before suddenly turning south, says Canadian County Undersheriff Chris West. One body was found inside the wreckage, a second about quarter-mile east and a third a quarter-mile west, West says.
...
Forbes says GPS readings confirmed there were probably two dozen storm-chasing vehicles in the area at the time.

Tim Samaras, a 45-year-old electronics engineer from Denver, and his storm-chasing partner, Pat Porter, are in a van that carries six probes, often called "turtles"—squat, 45-pound metal disks that look like flying saucers. Through embedded sensors, the probes can measure a tornado's wind speed and direction, barometric pressure, humidity, and temperature. Samaras's mission, and his passion, is to plant them in the path of the funnel. His hope is that both he and the instruments survive.

driving on wet roads is the biggest danger.